(Some) stress is actually good for you

In fact, some stress can actually be good for you — as long as you have the right response.

Positive stress, or “eustress,” is felt when you recognize a stressful situation as an opportunity that will result in a good outcome. A eustress response motivates you to overcome a challenge or accomplish a task.

“In the end, eustress can lead you to feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment, well-being, and wholeness.”

Negative stress, or “distress,” is when you perceive a stressor as a threat that is sure to result in a negative outcome. Distress can lead to fear, anxiety, and despair.

“[Distress] can result in chronic stress, anxiety, depression, and physical illnesses.”

Your perception of stress matters.

If positive stress isn’t already your default reaction and you’d like it to be, here are some mindset practices to might help you train your brain to have a positive reaction in the face of stressful situations:

Just like the tiny amount of disease in a vaccination, exposure to some stress is likely to make you more resilient and teach you how to respond successfully to future stressors.

“People with a history of some lifetime adversity reported better mental health and well-being outcomes than not only people with a high history of adversity but also than people with no history of adversity.”

But too much stress? It can go beyond just unhealthy and harmful to downright deadly.

Changing your perception of stress can literally save your life

Perhaps the most important distinction of positive stress is just being able to deal with it at all.

When you experience negative stress, feelings of fear and dread often linger. And when your body stays on high alert like that for long stretches of time, illnesses like anxiety and depression are more likely to develop.

According to health psychologist Kelly McGonigal, your perception of stress doesn’t just affect your health — it can have a very real impact on your lifespan.

In a 2013 TED Talk, McGonigal explains the findings from a University of Wisconsin-Madison study that followed nearly 29,000 participants over eight years to understand the importance of how we think about stress.

People who reported high levels of stress and also believed that stress had a major negative impact on their health had a 43 percent increased risk of death.

Those who reported high stress but didn’t correlate it to negative health effects were among the least likely to die in the whole study.

Aside from that astounding link between stress perception and longevity in humans, McGonigal also explained that a correlation had been established between moderate stress and improved neural function, learning, and helpful hormone responses in rats.

How to control stress instead of letting it control you

“Stress is an inevitable part of work and life, but the effect of stress upon us is far from inevitable … Stress can be good or bad depending on how you use it.”

Shawn Achor, a positive psychology expert and the founder of Good Think, Inc., and Justin Menkes, the author of Better Under Pressure: How Great Leaders Bring Out the Best in Themselves and Others, understand that we face a world full of change, uncertainty, and pressure that often causes stress.

But just because stress is inevitable doesn’t mean a negative reaction has to be.

1. Reframe stress as an indicator that you care

When I start feeling the physical effects of stress setting in, I try to be mindful that it’s not because something is going wrong with my brain or my body.

Instead, I reframe these feelings as my body telling me that I care about something. Your perception of stress matters.

Whether it’s the second before launching a new JotForm feature we’ve been working on for an entire year or stepping onto a stage to deliver a speech in front of way too many people — I actually welcome stress indicators as they help keep my senses sharp for the activity at hand.

2. Take action to prevent paralyzing fear

The first is a paralyzing response; the second a response that propels you to take action.

Whenever stress over a big decision threatens to stop me in my tracks, I find that keeping up momentum — no matter how slight at times — keeps negative feelings from becoming an automatic response and allows me to keep making progress toward my goals.

3. Focus on what you can change; forget what you can’t

Spending any of your precious mental energy on things that are out of your control is a complete waste.

4. Surround yourself with positive people

I believe culture is hugely important to the way a company and its workers react to stressful situations.

At JotForm, we’ve done our best to build a team we love by seeking out hard-working, upbeat people who gel with our current staff.

In such a cohesive, positive environment — negative personalities tend to weed themselves out. And that’s the natural way we like it.

And by having such a positive network to fall back on, even in the most stressful situations, it’s hard to mope around for too long before the positive stress reaction takes over and we all start working together to find ways to deal with the issue and move on.

We’ve grown to subconsciously measure a person’s worth based off how many hours they work, how much is on their plate and put simply — whether or not they are running around like a chicken with their head cut off.

Unfortunately, the around-the-clock culture in which most of us live often values being busy and talking about how stressed we are instead of actually doing something about it.

Stress is simply your body’s reaction to an outside force.

One that, when managed correctly, might even make your physical, mental, and emotional state more healthy.

Aytekin Tank is the Founder and CEO of JotForm. A developer by trade but a storyteller by heart, he writes about his journey as an entrepreneur and shares advice for other startups. He loves to hear from JotForm users.